0 Shares

Share

The Crop to Cup coffee company launched three years ago in Brooklyn and Chicago, importing beans from small family farmers in Uganda, roasting them off-site in small batches at Ozzie’s and Gillies, and distributing them to wholesale accounts at restaurants like Double Crown, Green Table, Highlands, and Saltie. This week or next (permits pending), the business expands into the retail sector with a Brooklyn Heights café. But as Crop to Cup co-founder Taylor Mork tells it, this new venture isn’t quite your average urban coffee bar. It’s a retail co-op, managed and curated by its members, and “everything except the espresso machine is for sale.”

“Everything,” in this case, means not just the coffee drinks, made with Battenkill Valley Creamery milk from Salem, New York, but also the antique furniture and all its contents. Eventually, once the business is in full swing, armoires will be filled with clothes, and shelves stocked with flower teas and locally made foods like McClure’s Pickles, Nunu Chocolates, and Early Bird Granola — these last two, like Crop to Cup, are habitual vendors at Brooklyn Flea. The space, at Atlantic Avenue’s western edge, has sat vacant for years, after prior incarnations as a clothing store and charcuterie shop, and Mork considers the renovation process “bringing the space back to life.”

Even before the coffee starts to flow, the storefront has begun serving the community as a drop-off point for Basis, a farm-to-chef distributor that recently launched a home-food delivery program. Basis will also provide ingredients for the daily set menu Mork hopes to serve once the full kitchen is up and running. Until then, expect to find pastries and desserts from the likes of Kumquat Cupcakery, espresso drinks, drip coffee, and single-serve cups prepared on enough devices (all for sale, naturally) to satisfy the gadget-minded contemporary coffee geek — French-press pots, Clever Coffee Drippers, and Hario drippers from Japan among them.